EBL Inhomogeneity and Hard-Spectrum Gamma-Ray Sources

Abstract

The unexpectedly hard very-high-energy (VHE; $E>100$ GeV) $\gamma$-ray spectra of a few distant blazars have been interpreted as evidence for a reduction of the $\gamma \gamma$ opacity of the Universe due to the interaction of VHE $\gamma$-rays with the extragalactic background light (EBL) compared to the expectation from our current knowledge of the density and cosmological evolution of the EBL. One of the suggested solutions to this problem consisted of the inhomogeneity of the EBL. In this paper, we study the effects of such inhomogeneities on the energy density of the EBL (which then also becomes anisotropic) and the resulting $\gamma \gamma$ opacity. Specifically, we investigate the effects of cosmic voids along the line of sight to a distant blazar. We find that the effect of such voids on the $\gamma \gamma$ opacity, for any realistic void size, is only of the order of $\lesssim 1$ % and much smaller than expected from a simple linear scaling of the $\gamma \gamma$ opacity with the line-of-sight galaxy under-density due to a cosmic void.

Accepted for Publication in The Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (5)

• Very-High-Energy Gamma Rays from a Distant Quasar: How Transparent Is the Universe?
• A hadronic origin for ultra-high-frequency-peaked BL Lac objects
• Deep Broadband Observations of the Distant Gamma-ray Blazar PKS 1424+240
• A Correlation Between Hard Gamma-ray Sources and Cosmic Voids Along the Line of Sight
• Probing cluster environments of blazars through gamma-gamma absorption

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Measurement of the EBL spectral energy distribution using the VHE gamma-ray spectra of H.E.S.S. blazars